SM
Now that management changes have started I can confidentally predict that by Christmas, certainly before the next anniversaries of the three accidents that:
1.Bond will have been renamed (World Helicopters, INAER UK, INAER North Sea?). This is both to abandon a name that now has too much adverse baggage and to increase the association with bigger operations to use if they have another accident.
2. Their aircraft will be painted in a new colour scheme (white and orange perhaps)I'm also sure that in 2 or 3 years, after they have built up EC225 experience in Denmark, Dancopter UK will appear. Maybe by 2020 there will by NHV UK too in Aberdeen!
If BMI Regional fold or relocate that will free up a nice new base on the east side. The old Heli-One hangar is still empty too.Roll on some competition!
SM Has it taken this long for you to come up with a prediction which many others have been making these past weeks?
"Roll on some competition!" sounds exactly like the threat we've been anticipating from a representative of an exceptionally profitable oil giant, which would unhesitatingly employ the divide-and-rule tactic to force down the profitability of the sub-contractors.
Problem is that if the re-introduction of a fourth and even a fifth helicopter operator to the area should happen, as it did when BP brought in British Caledonian Helicopters, then the rivals can't afford to invest in more than the absolute minimum levels of safety as required by the authorities.
I'll probably be retired by the time that another helicopter company sets up in Aberdeen, but I hereby make a solemn declaration to our offshore-working passengers:
If in the coming years after a fourth helicopter offshore operator sets up in North East Scotland, there starts to be a rise in helicopter offshore accident statistics, you should consider that investment in flight safety such as Bristow currently pours in, could have been pared back to the minimum required. This will in all likelihood have been as a consequence of one or more oil giants squeezing the operators "until the pips squeak".
In this life you "gets what you pays for" and safety costs money. I'm now going to avoid entering into further exchanges with
SM since my decades in North Sea helicopter flying have shown me the truth of what I've stated and I have nothing much more to add.